


Old Chinese Proverbs and Other Wisdom

by facetofcathy



Category: Merlin (BBC)
Genre: 1000-3000 words, Episode Related, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-15
Updated: 2008-12-15
Packaged: 2017-10-02 03:42:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/facetofcathy/pseuds/facetofcathy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Merlin let out his breath and slumped onto the worktable. "I'm a fool, Gaius," he said.</em></p><p>"Are you just making conversation, Merlin, or have you done something specifically foolish?"</p><p>"Oh very specifically, Gaius."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old Chinese Proverbs and Other Wisdom

**Author's Note:**

> An Episode Tag to 1.10, The Moment of Truth

Gwen and Morgana had ridden on ahead, ostensibly to leave Merlin to his sadness in the relative peace that Arthur's company afforded, but Merlin had distinctly heard some low-voiced conversation about the way he, and by he, Merlin was sure they could have only meant Arthur, had been staring at their breeches-clad, er, at their breeches. They had both been magnificent in the fight against Kanan , as had Arthur of course, and he understood why Gwen had come, and even perhaps why Morgana had sought an opportunity to prove herself, and he was grateful to them all, even if their motivation had been more about fulfilling needs of their own hearts than his. All that was clear, or as clear as the motives of women could ever be to Merlin.

But what of Arthur? Why _had_ he come on this little adventure? It could have, should have perhaps, gone horribly wrong, and why would the only heir to another throne stick his nose into the doings of such a small insignificant—one way to find out.

"Arthur? Sire, why _did_ you come to Ealdor?" Merlin asked.

"Idiot," Arthur said easily.

"Sire?"

"Don't Sire me, Merlin." Arthur reined in his horse and swung his leg over and slid easily to the ground. He looked up at Merlin expectantly and when Merlin just looked determinedly confused at him, he sighed and said, "Off the horse, Merlin."

"Am I allowed to know why?"

"Get down here."

Merlin set about the labourious task of dismounting without breaking his head, his leg, the horse's leg or accidentally inducing it to run off—not that it had shown much inclination to running thus far.

"Right, then," Arthur said and settled his hands on Merlin's shoulders and looked him straight in the eye. The intense scrutiny reminded Merlin of the prelude to their impromptu fight in the marketplace, and he was immediately uneasy—he'd had rather enough fighting just lately. "You have to do this with your feet on the ground, Merlin," Arthur said, "because contrary to the collected works of every court bard from here to Orkney, you can't kiss your beloved on horseback—at least not very easily."

"What if you're on the same horse?" Merlin asked and Arthur rolled his eyes and kissed him. On the mouth. "Oh, you meant me!" Merlin said, or tried to anyway, and yes, fine, that explained rather a lot.

They tried it later, the kissing from horseback thing. Merlin's horse shied and spontaneously discovered a heretofore unproven ability to gallop, but unfortunately its sense of direction hadn't also suddenly improved. Merlin got it stopped by means best left unexamined, and turned around by means of some Welsh cursing he'd learned from an itinerant seller of medicines and herbs and the judicious application of his boot heels to the heaving sides of the foul beast. Once it was going in the right direction again, it lost all interest in speed.

"I'm sorry about your friend," Arthur said diffidently when he'd caught up to him again,"and I know you'll miss your mother, but I'm glad you're coming back," which might be the longest string of words Arthur'd ever spoken to him that weren't composed primarily of insults. Even though Merlin suspected Arthur of feeling a bit guilty for indulging in, ah, deep expressions of friendship so soon after tragedy, the words still warmed Merlin's heart.

Merlin urged his horse into an actual trot, suddenly feeling so good about himself, and Arthur, and the fact that Arthur apparently loved him, that he started to feel like he was actually getting the hang of this riding thing.

"You really do have the worst seat I've ever seen, Merlin," Arthur said, and Merlin manfully refrained from engaging in low insults in return.

Later, when it seemed appropriate, he did, as the saying went, throw the words back in Arthur's face.

"Oh, shut up, Merlin," Arthur said, "I apologized. I got down on my knees, in fact, and apologized. Take it like a man."

"Firstly, that was not apologizing, what you were doing down on your knees, and secondly, well, we just covered the second thing too."

Arthur punched him in the arm, only moderately hard, and rolled over and promptly commenced snoring. Arthur's rather unexpected declaration, and further exploration of the—depth of his feelings, you might say, and the firmness of his—perhaps devotion was the best word, had done a good job of distracting Merlin from his sadness over both Will's death and having to leave his home again, but his thoughts remained troubled. He was not going to go to sleep soon, that was obvious, so he slipped from Arthur's bed and quietly returned to his own room.

He ran his hands over the book of magic, feeling the tingle under his skin, as he always did whenever he touched its pages. He'd come close to losing everything, and then gained more than he'd ever thought possible, all in the space of days, but his heart was not light. He felt a fraud, letting Arthur think Will was the sorcerer. Letting Arthur kiss him, claim to love him, when he could not reveal the truth. "I wish," Merlin whispered to the book. "I wish that the world was such that Arthur could know what I really am."

***

He really was an idiot it would seem. He should have seen this coming; he'd felt the hot flush of magic in his blood the night before. He'd felt the familiar tingle of skin and that other, rather awkward reaction he always got, which he was never, ever going to discuss with Gaius ever, but he would not be averse to sharing with a certain prince, that is if that prince could be told about the magical cause of the, ah, effect in question. He'd told himself he was being foolish, that the tingle and the, ah, other things, were merely aftereffects of his earlier activities, in much the same way he was successfully convincing himself right now that the chair in Gaius' workroom was particularly hard and uncomfortable this morning because of the time he'd spent on horseback the previous day.

"There you are, my boy," Gaius said.

"What, ah, what did you just call me?" Merlin said and held his breath, which was silly, but–

"My boy? Merlin? Are you quite well this morning. You look a bit pale, and why are you holding your breath?"

Merlin let out his breath and slumped onto the worktable. "I'm a fool, Gaius," he said.

"Are you just making conversation, Merlin, or have you done something specifically foolish?"

"Oh very specifically, Gaius."

"Merlin?" Gaius sounded exactly like his mother when he used that tone, but Merlin figured mentioning that was not a good idea just at the moment.

"Step out the door, Gaius. Take a bit of a walk round."

Gaius glared at Merlin but did go and open the door, and all was blissfully silent for a time. Merlin pretended that he had, in fact, not done the really very stupid thing he'd done the night before—the part with the magic, not the other part—the other part had been quite fun and not stupid at all. But inevitably, Gaius came back and the peace of self-delusion was gone.

"Merlin," Gaius said, and that was a tone his mother had used as well. It had often preceded a period where sitting was difficult for an entirely un-horse-related reason. "What have you done?"

"Ah–"

"Why are all the ladies of the court wearing breeches?" Gaius sounded incensed and something else, something best left unexamined by apprentice healers, manservants to princes and bad sorcerers. Now that's an interesting point—perhaps he was just overworked? That really would explain the whole sorry mess.

"Actually," Merlin said, "that was a totally unintended and somewhat mysterious side effect, of—of, well, a spell was involved."

"Side effect? Do I want to know?"

"Almost certainly not."

"Merlin."

"Arthur," Merlin said.

"What about His Highness, the Prince of Camelot?" Gaius countered.

Merlin stood and paced to the far corner of the workroom, paced back, stood facing Gaius, turned away again, took a deep breath, turned around–

"Merlin, for pity's sake, what did you do?"

That pulsing vein really couldn't be healthy in a man his age. "I," Merlin said, "accidentally, I want that understood, cast a spell on Arthur that seems to have had some rather wide reaching effects. On the whole court. Except you, it would seem."

"Not just women in breeches, then."

"No."

"Tell me the whole story, Merlin." Gaius said and pointed at the chair Merlin had vacated. Merlin sat.

He shuddered at the memory. He'd woken early and had enjoyed a languorous moment of reminiscing about the night before, until it had occurred to him that reminiscing _with_ Arthur might well be a lot more fun than doing it alone, so he'd pulled on some breeches—lose ones, and a shirt—a long one, and he'd headed for the royal chamber.

Arthur had also been up early, but not in the way Merlin had been hoping for. He'd been ensconced in his chamber, which was perfectly clean and tidier than Merlin thought possible, with a breakfast laid out in almost artistic symmetry and his hair had been, well something had happened to his hair which caused Merlin to stare quite rudely for a rather long while. But Gaius didn't need to know all that, so Merlin skipped ahead in the tale.

> "My lord, Merlin," Arthur said in solemn formality.
> 
> Merlin started to laugh, Arthur did like a joke, but Arthur wasn't smiling, he was standing straight and stiff and wary. "How may I serve you, My Lord?" He said.
> 
> "I, ah—what?"
> 
> "Are you well, my lord, please take my seat." Arthur stood back and indicated his chair and Merlin was feeling a little off, and his stomach was churning a bit. "Shall I fetch the Court Physician?" Arthur said and stepped towards the door.
> 
> "Gaius? You mean Gaius? No, why would you do that?"
> 
> "You do not seem yourself, My Lord. Perhaps I should have my manservant fetch you some water." Arthur raised an imperious hand, and a man stepped into the centre of the room. The man was so unprepossessing that Merlin hadn't even noticed him. Arthur ordered him to fetch water, and Merlin stared after him in distraction. He was the perfect manservant, deferential, quick to his tasks, eerily composed, perfectly groomed, and his vocabulary seemed to consist entirely of _Yes, Sire_, and _No, Sire_.
> 
> Merlin had a very bad feeling about this that was not dissimilar to the bad feeling he got eating slightly dodgy cheese. "Arthur, why are you acting so—so, well, weird?"
> 
> "My Lord Merlin, if my behaviour displeases you, I will take steps to correct it."
> 
> "You would? _Why_ would you?"
> 
> "My Lord? I may be a mere Prince of Camelot, but you, My Lord, are the greatest sorcerer the kingdom has ever known." Arthur took another step back and Merlin saw fear in his eyes.
> 
> "Yeah, that's me," Merlin said sourly, "the greatest sorcerer and the biggest idiot, both."
> 
> "My Lord," Arthur said, scandalized. "You are most certainly not an idiot."
> 
> Merlin stared at him—his Prince, his friend, his, ah, good friend—looking at him in concern and fear, and believing fervently that Merlin was not an idiot, and he bolted from the room.
> 
> He may have briefly, very briefly—for barely a second—entertained the idea of going to see if Uther would step back in fear and look upon him with solemn respect, but he was too horrified by the effects of his accidental spell on Arthur to really enjoy it, and he hurried back to his own room where he could be mortified in peace.
> 
> It would be wrong to say he didn't notice that the women walking the castle corridors all had breeches on—it would just be closer to the truth to say that he was too discombobulated to pay much attention, well except for when a certain kitchen maid had to bend over to retrieve something she'd dropped, but really he barely glanced in her direction.

"That's quite the story, Merlin," Gaius said wearily. Merlin was coming around to thinking that Gaius' weariness was not exactly physical all the time.

"I really did barely glance in her direction. She saw me, squeaked in terror and ran off."

"I meant the part with Arthur," Gaius said.

"Oh, yes, well, that was really weird."

"You didn't, by any chance, happen to make some sort of statement, out loud even, and possibly while clutching that magic book, that started with the words _I wish_, did you?"

"I may have," Merlin said miserably.

"Merlin, do the words caution and secrecy mean anything to you?"

"I wasn't trying to cast a spell. I didn't actually want anything to happen."

"Really?"

"Yes, really. Well, mostly. Oh, Gaius, we have to fix this."

"Are you sure? You don't want all of Camelot, and especially Prince Arthur and King Uther bowing and scraping and showing the greatest deference for the Great Sorcerer Merlin?"

"Very," Merlin said, "very, very sure."

Gaius' face broke into a pleased smile. "Well go get the book, boy. Don't just sit there, we have work to do."

Merlin grinned back and ran off to his room. The reversal spell was really quite simple, once they'd found it on page 895, in a very tiny hand, buried in a long-winded paragraph about the dangers of turning people into penguins, whatever they were. Merlin relished the tingle and rush of blood to his head, and ah, elsewhere, when he intoned the words and he sprang up, grateful again for his clothing choices, and he pulled open Gaius' door. Gwen was right outside, beautiful and glorious in her saffron gown, and Merlin smiled wider and wished her a cheery good morning, and she said something scathing about it being closer to mid-day, and Merlin's heart soared.

He ran off towards the royal chambers again and he burst into Arthur's rooms which were horribly messy with the remains of some food scattered on the table, and Arthur stomped over to him, clad in a shirt and well, nothing else, and his hair was in its usual fabulous disarray, and Merlin grinned so wide, his jaw started to ache, which gave him an idea actually.

"Merlin, you idiot. Where the hell have you been, and more to the point, where have you hidden all my clothes?" Arthur said.

"Say that again, Sire."

"Say, what again?" Arthur looked suspicious.

"The first bit."

"Merlin, you idiot?"

"Yes," Merlin said, in what he really hoped was a sexy husky voice and not the sort of sound you made while suffering from the flux, and he advanced on his friend, his really very good friend. Arthur backed up, not in fear, but more by way of a tactical relocation, and Merlin closed the curtains around the bed in a rather haphazard way, and he engaged in a spirited demonstration of why Arthur didn't need any clothes just at the moment, or possibly for the rest of the day.


End file.
